Recently, expectations for regenerative medicine that repairs lost or function-deteriorated cells by using human or animal cells have been increasing. Also, research of proliferation and tissue engineering of somatic cells and somatic stem cells have been developing. Furthermore, research of ES cells and development of the techniques to create and proliferate iPS cells have been developing. In order to culture and organize the cells in vitro used for such medical treatment, a processing system for cell cultures which has improved safety, quality, high-throughput achievement and manufacturing cost, has been desired.
However, in order to carry out medical treatment by transplantation of cells into a human or animal body, proliferation, differentiation or organization of cells has to be carried out effectively and efficiently. In addition, ensuring safety is important. Two conditions are required to ensure safety as mentioned above. First, in the environment in which the cells are processed, it is necessity to prevent foreign matters, dust and germs from entering the environment, and keep the environment sterility. Secondly, particularly in the case of culturing the cells derived from a patient (autologous cell culture), it has to be prevented to contaminate the patient's cells with other people's cells, non-human cells, viruses, bacteria, etc. Moreover, it has to be eliminated the bacteria and non-target cells from target cells.
Conventionally, in order to ensure safety, culturing cells have been carried out in a large clean room, which maintains the entire room clean atmosphere. This clean room is a very expensive facility since an equipment cost and a maintenance cost are extremely high. Therefore, the cost of cultured cells is also significantly increased.
Culturing process and procedure by using an automated cell-culturing system need to be recorded and saved as well as by culturing cells manually. In the automated cell-culturing system, it is desired to carry out recording and saving culturing process and procedure more efficiently and precisely than the case in which they are carried out by culturing cells manually.
A step of culturing cells includes various steps. The steps are not particularly limited, and examples of the steps include: a step of separating cells from a tissue obtained from a human or non-human, a step of isolating target cells from the separated cells, a step of primary-culturing cells, a step of expansion of cells, a step of sub-culturing, a step of differentiating cells to arbitrary (desired) cells, a step of organizing cells, and a step of packaging cells/tissues. These steps may be appropriately selected in accordance with, for example, the purpose of medical treatment and cell type and are not particularly limited. When a myoblast sheet utilized for heart failure is to be prepared, the cell sheet is prepared through: a step of obtaining muscle tissues from a patient and isolating and primary-culturing myoblasts, a step of expansion of myoblasts, a step of sub-culturing myoblasts, and a step of preparing monolayered myoblast sheets, and a step of stacking monolayerd myoblast sheets. When a cell sheet is to be prepared for heart failure by utilizing ES cells or iPS cells, the cell sheet is prepared through: a step of expansion of ES cells or iPS cells, a step of differentiating ES cells or iPS cells into arbitrary cells such as myoblasts or cardiomyocytes, a step of preparing monolayered cell sheets, and a step of stacking them. When a cell sheet for corneas disease is to be prepared, the sheet is prepared through: a step of obtaining oral mucosa tissues, a step of isolating cells from the tissues, and a step of preparing monolayer-cell sheets. In those steps of culturing cells, the steps described above and other steps can be combined depend on the purpose of culture. Therefore, in culturing of cells, there are several cases, such as carrying out a part of the steps described above selectively, carrying out the steps in changing order of the steps, and repeating a part or all of the steps. Moreover, the time required for carrying out the steps is different depending on each step.